Can anyone who understands these things explain to me how Pesach is supposed to work when it falls on Saturday night? We had a long debate about what we were supposed to do, and couldn't think of any way to coordinate things, and our haggaddahs weren't helpful at all.

I assume you're supposed to wait until shabbat is fully out to start the seder? We didn't bother, because it would have been ludicrously late at this time of year, but in theory, you're supposed to, right? Then what? How do you light the festival candles if it's already been chag for an hour? Are you supposed to mess around with tapers and a long-burning candle?

Obviously you do havdalah before starting the festival stuff, that's normal, but how exactly does it work? The best instructions we could find implied that you were supposed to do "between holy and holy" with only the candle, leaving out the wine and spices. I don't quite get that either; I assume you don't do the wine because you're about to make kiddush anyway, and you don't want to bless the same wine twice. But why leave out the spices? And with the fire, Screwy thought that you say "the lights of the fire" over the festival candles themselves, rather than lighting a havdalah candle. Dad thought you should light the havdalah candle and then not extinguish it, because as soon as you lit it it would be chag, but I'm not sure that's right, I have it in my head that you can extinguish on chag even if you can't light.

In terms of food, it makes sense that you're supposed to clear out the chametz by lunch time (or halachic midday, or something) on Friday, and then not eat any chametz over Shabbat. Fine. But does that mean you eat breadless meals with no motzi, even on Shabbat itself? Or is there some workround I haven't thought of?

Does anyone round here know how to make (lay?) a fire? I have a fireplace, and I have a whim to use it. But I have never made a fire before and I'm a little nervous. Yes, I could google for instructions but I'd rather have something vetted by someone who has actually done it. It's the sort of thing I think I know how to do because I've read lots of descriptions in old books, but when it comes down to it I'm not that sure of the practical details. Any advice much appreciated (even if it's, don't even attempt it, you're too much of a klutz and disaster will be sure to ensue).

I want to do a sort of moral maze type discussion with my class next week. Does anyone have any suggestions for scenarios that could get 12-year-olds thinking about moral dilemmas? A mixture of secular ones and religious ones is probably good, so I welcome suggestions from people who aren't Jewish.

So. I joined Twitter, but I seem to be incapable of doing anything. Reading the FAQ just confused me further; possibly I'm too stupid to hang with the cool kids. Does anyone want to hold my hand and help me figure out how to make the thing work with Jabber or LJTalk, and how to add friends (I tried the obvious thing of going to profile pages and clicking on "add", but that just refreshed my homepage with no effect). I feel dumb.

Assuming I eventually manage to make it do stuff, please let me know if you're on the site and under what username so I can friend you.

Edit 3 pm: I managed to get the friending thing to work by means of using IE instead of Firefox. But still no luck with the IM system

Edit 5 pm: It's not me, it's Twitter; you have to try things a dozen times before it actually does anything. Thanks to pplfichi for testing for me

Here's the thing: I need more books. ( read more and more )

Having been on the waiting list since I first accepted the job, I've now reached the front of the queue for an appartment in the KI visiting scholars' complex, the Wenner-Gren Centre. I have to decide by Tuesday whether I want to take up this place.

( decisions, decisions )

Edit 11 June: I contacted the admin person today and said I wouldn't take the flat and they should make it available for someone else. Thanks for all your good advice; it's always pleasant to have one's inclination confirmed by more neutral friends!

It's the last bar mitzvah class of term on Monday, and we're supposed to be watching a film. It's part of their curriculum to watch a couple of Jewish films and discuss them, and it seems a nice way to celebrate the end of term.

However, my mind is absolutely blanking on what we should watch. So can anyone think of a good Jewish-themed film? I would really prefer it not to be about the Holocaust, because there should be more to Jewish education than trying to guilt kids because lots of people died. Also I'd rather avoid rose-tinted nostalgia about pre-emancipation Europe (such as Fiddler on the Roof and Yentl), if possible.

It also needs to be suitable for 12-year-olds, bright, mature 12yos, but still 12. I'm more worried about themes that are too complex for them to connect to their experience, than about the odd naughty word or reference to sexuality (Swedish people seem to be a lot less prudish about kids discussing that sort of thing than Americans anyway). Generally, I want something that is not only about a Jewish theme, but at least somewhat in line with the values that I am trying to teach.

I also have to find said film in a rental shop or in the synagogue library between now and Monday, which might be a challenge. So I need as many suggestions as possible in case I can't find the right one!

Does anyone happen to know how to get IE7 and / or Windows Media Player 11 without also installing that evil "Windows Genuine Advantage" malware? I don't desperately need either, but it would be more convenient to have them than not. And my automatic update thing keeps trying to install them, and getting stuck when I tell it I don't want WGA.

Note: my copy of Windows is in fact perfectly legal. But I don't like WGA on principle, and I have also heard that it can give false positives and the last thing I need is for my computer to be locked because of a bug in the nasty intrusive program.

So a while back there was a meme for people to post anti-war songs. I thought that was a good meme, but at the time I didn't participate because I thought, I don't know any anti-war songs except really obvious ones like Universal Soldier and Blowing in the wind. I realized somewhat belatedly that I do in fact know the several Israeli anti-war songs, including the Song for Peace. I started composing a translation of it and found it was coming out with scansion. What I ended up with was not really a translation of the song as such, but a poem based on my (probably reliable) memory of my (almost certainly unreliable) transcription of the song. It's not really good enough for public but it's not bad enough to destroy and try to forget the memory of having written it, so here you go:

( if you wanted emo filk-y poetry there are probably better places for it )

It's so tempting right now to pray for peace. That would be the wrong thing to do for me personally, in my religious framework, if I don't also do something practical to make peace happen. I really don't know what though. Of course, it's far too easy to feel helpless to have any effect on distant foreign wars, but that feeling is worse right now, as a foreigner in a country where I have no contacts and don't know how these things work. Does anyone have any suggestions? Even something as simple as a charity I could donate to would be a good start.

And if you don't have any ideas about that, suggestions for improving the poemlet are also welcome. I'm particularly concerned about the line: All empty now are victory's joy / And songs of praise! because while it's obviously a plural statement grammatically, aesthetically it feels like it should be singlular. Any ideas?

So, I have a new shiny computer (with a literally shiny purple mouse) and a very lovely internet connection. And since basically none of my friends live in the same country as me (though I'm working on that), I'm thinking I should get a system set up for internet-based telephony before I go broke from my phone bill.

Does anyone have any opinions which service I should choose? ( details about the decision process )

Probably the answer is just to download all of them and see how I get on with the aspects of the service that are free (calling other people on the service, and some form of primitive IM client). And then decide which is worth paying for. But anyone who's tried this kind of thing, I would welcome input.

Oh, and while we're on the subject, just in case anyone has been under a rock for the past few days, LJ now has a Jabber service. You need your username and password and the server is livejournal.com, port 5222. Seems reasonably cute, if somewhat gimmicky.

I am trying to organize to send my books here. I don't know how many books I have, nor how much they weigh. I think it's in the order of hundreds (rather than tens or thousands). They take up about 6 metres of shelving, but that's a mix of all different sizes of books and all different sizes of shelves!

I have two options: I can ship them, which costs £300 for a maximum of 1 cubic metre with no restriction on weight, or I can post them, which costs about £100 per 30 kg with fairly generous restrictions on volume. It seems like the second option is better, but I just don't have a feel for how many books I can fit in to either 1 cubic metre or 30 kg. (The other advantage of the posting method is that if I can't fit all the books in one parcel, I can send two parcels, and the price just increases proportionately. With the shipping, if it's more than 1 cubic metre the price jumps right up.) I have driven myself crazy trying to ask Google how much books generally weigh; the words are too common to get anything meaningful.

So I'm going to ask LJ instead; there's got to be someone here who nows the answer to this, or knows where to look, or at least has a better feel for these spatial things than I do!

The other options are crazy ones involving basically bringing the books here myself. I can carry about 20 kg of books in my suitcase if I fly home and come back with them, which would cost in the order of £100 per trip plus masses of hassle. And I could do it repeatedly. Or, my parents have conceived an ambition to drive to Sweden. If I could pay for them to do this, which I think would cost in the order of £500, they could bring me an entire car full of books. Or thirdly, I could, you know, go and spend £300 on new books on Amazon and get them to deliver them in one huge parcel, but I don't think I would get very many books for that money.

So, what is the cheapest way to end this unbearable situation of being bookless?

So I'm reading a review about c-Myc and the genes it activates, and I come across the phrase This Laodicean response does not reflect some intrinsic property of the ODC gene. This piqued my curiosity; ok, the review writer is blatantly showing off here, but I consider myself to be as classically knowledgeable as the next biochemist, and I have no idea what he is referring to. I tried Wikipedia, and it tells me that Laodices is an alternate name for Elektra, or any of several minor queens, and that there are several places called Laodicea named after said queens.

So does anyone have a clue why a relatively weak gene response might be described as Laodicean? Other than that the author got over-excited about looking for synonyms for weak in his thesaurus! In some ways it's kind of cute, I must admit, but it's annoying me that I don't recognize the reference.

So compilerbitch has convinced me that my life would be better if I finally caved and got a laptop. The question is what to get. If you have any views on the subject, please comment with them; I reckon I can get better information from the collective wisdom of my flist than from someone who's trying to sell me stuff.

My requirements: reliable; not unreasonably expensive; able to run a wide range of software; not too difficult to use; wireless card and preferably normal modem as well; ability to transfer data between machines easily; compatible with the rest of the world (especially work-wise, but in general too); CD rewriter and DVD player would be nice; ability to play games, mostly of the retro kind. I don't really care about the latest ultra-fast processor, or flashy high-res graphics, or fantastically lightweight.

I need to choose an OS, and a make of processor etc, and whether I should look for something second hand or buy new, and once I've made the decision, where is a good place to get it. And I realize I'm basically inviting a huge fight here, but I think I might find it informative, so feel free.

( possibilities )

Today is Purim, when Jews are supposed to: get drunk, read the Biblical book of Esther, cross dress, give charity (specifically, small change to beggars; other kinds of charity are a general good thing, but not particularly associated with Purim), and give gifts to friends, traditionally edible ones.

This year, I have failed to go to the purim party cos my mother doesn't really like purim, and had just done a big teaparty for all the old people in the community so she didn't feel like going out this evening. I am not drunk, but I only very rarely get drunk on purim; it's not one of the commandments that I find most personally meaningful. But I would like to give gifts and charity. pthalogreen had this very cool idea of celebrating a Bahai gift-giving festival (that I can't spell) by giving all her friends list mp3s, and I want to copy this idea.

The trouble is that I don't want to take part in illegal filesharing. Partly because I personally believe that artists should get financial rewards for their work, and partly because, well, it wouldn't be very appropriate to celebrate Purim by giving stolen gifts! So what I originally planned was that for every mp3 I uploaded, I would make sure to buy a legitimate copy of that mp3. However, I can't find a way to buy mp3s that doesn't involve dodgy business practices. I don't want to use a subscription service, because I want to own the mp3s permanently, not pay a stupid amount per month to "rent" them. And I don't want to pay to download mp3s in a way that requires me to install lots of icky software on my computer, and which can only be played using a particular proprietary program, and which has all kinds of restrictions built in on making even perfectly legal copies for personal use.

So I'm asking my knowledgeable friends list: is it even possible to do what I want, namely: pay a sensible price to an above-board company (who will then pass on the appropriate licensing fee to the musician), in exchange for being allowed to download a normal, unadulterated mp3 file? If this isn't possible, what I might do is give away my own (normal) mp3s from various sources, which technically isn't legal but I don't feel too bad about it, and also buy a legit copy with DRM so that the artist gets their fair share. But not bother to actually use it, because it's too much of a nuisance.

Does anyone happen to know where I can find / what has happened to Raphael Carter's androgyny resources? I'm taking part in a discussion which I think would benefit from a link to that material, and I can find lots and lots of references to it but not the RAQ itself or any related original stuff. I really hope that has not vanished from the internet...

Anyway I'm thinking that there are several people on my flist who are as likely to know about this as anyone, so it's worth a try.

For any Americans reading, how does one buy postage stamps in this country? I ask because last time I tried this I got a lot of dodgy looks, some homophobic abuse^* and no stamps.

* I think based on the erroneous assumption that hatam_soferet and I were a couple, rather than the fact that I was trying to buy stamps. I reckon that since I am in fact bi, if people are going to hate gay people I'm fairly deserving. But it was a bit mean on hatam_soferet who is in fact a virtuous married woman.